Title: “Controversia”
Performers: Adolfo Alonso and Justo Vega
Culture/Origin: Cuba
Orchestration: Marimba, Spanish guitar, Cuban tres, laud,
tiple, string bass, clave, guiro, guayo, and two male vocalists
This piece of music is called the punto and is of Cuban decent.
This type of music includes instrumentalists who play rubato inbetween
the verses of the vocalists. The
vocalists are improvising and reacting to each other’s lyrics. Often times the vocalist will jump in with a
response to what the other vocalist has said.
It begins with long stanzas and as the song progresses turns into much
shorter stanzas. The topic of discussion
is often humorous and pokes fun at the other person or a specific topic. Within performing this genre of music, play
is essential. The vocalists are creating
their stanzas as a reaction to what the other person has created. The idea of this happening in this type of
music shows us the importance of play within socialization. We often hear the phrase “Play nice!” as
kids, but the only way for that to occur is to continually socialize through
play with others. When two people have a
conversation, how one responds is based off of what has been asked or stated
previously. This type of music is a way
to have a conversation with each other, hence creating a type of play or
socialization.
Hi Jenna,
ReplyDeleteConnecting the music conversation to socialization is interesting! I agree that it helps with socialization especially the development of conversational flow. If you can create a stanza like this on the spot then you can definitely have a speaking conversation!
My Spanish is still rudimentary so I can't really catch everything that is being said, but it appears to me that the older man is complaining about everything and the younger (bald) man is basically responding by telling him to quit whining. It is true that this has a playfulness to it that reminds me of some of the back and forth stage dialogues between Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. They were clothed in mock seriousness, but they were tremendously playful in nature.
ReplyDeleteJenna,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this piece. This is an interesting example of how play can be seen in music and even more sophisticated music. I think an example like this would work really well with students as an improvisation activity. Even though the lyrics and music might already be written, performers still have the opportunity to play around with rhythms and tempo in their selections.
It would fun to compare this type of text improvisation song in a variety of cultures. I think we could all recall one from our childhood or the lives of our students (anyone know "Shabooyah"?) and moving from known to unknown examples could open the door to this music for our students.
ReplyDelete